page_title: Protostar
hierarchical_section_title: Protostar
caption_attribution_description: English: An artists conception of the birth of star L1014. Español: Impresion artistica de la NASA del nacimiento de la estrella L1014. The full caption reads: "In this artist's conception, observers peer through the dark dust of L1014 to witness the birth of a star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected a faint, warm object inside the apparently starless core of a small, dense molecular cloud. If, as astronomers suspect, there is a young star deep inside the dusty core, it would have a structure similar to this illustration. "Dark dust from the cloud, attracted by the gravity of the newborn star, forms a disc as it spirals inward. Often, the hidden birth of a star is heralded by bipolar outflows, jets of material moving outward from the star's poles. Although astronomers do see a faint 'fan-shaped nebulosity' where they might expect the jet to be, the existence of the jet has yet to be confirmed."
context_page_description: A protostar is a celestial body which is a step of the star formation process. It is a contracted giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium.
context_section_description: A protostar is a celestial body which is a step of the star formation process.  It is  a contracted giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium.
caption: Artist's drawing of a protostar
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2005:07:21 17:13:42", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3669", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920"}